Names, brands, writing, and the language of commerce.

April 21, 2011

Not Stupid

In honor of Earth Day, here’s an eco-friendly slogan I admire a lot. Although maybe “friendly” isn’t quite the right word.

“Don’t leave the planet to the stupid.”

The slogan’s been around for at least a year, but I’d never seen it—or anything else from the German solar-panel company Solon—until I opened my Sunday San Francisco Chronicle a few weeks ago*. Last May, TriplePundit called the slogan “the most fantastic, and perhaps the most arrogant corporate tag-line of all time.”

I agree, if “fantastic” means “excellent” and “arrogant” means “smart and confident.” In a world of interchangeable Three P slogans (“People Passion Performance,” et al.), Solon’s tagline is bracing, distinctive, and unequivocal. It’s unafraid to break rules—like the “no negatives” rule (why not start with “Don’t”?) and the “keep it bland” rule (why not call the stupid “the stupid”?). And, yes, it’s seven words long. Just because Nike uses a three-word slogan doesn’t mean your company has to.

The Solon name is satisfying, too. It packs a double punch: it suggests “sun on”—“sol” means “sun” in Latin and Spanish—while evoking wisdom and laws. (Solon was an Athenian lawgiver; lower-case “solon” used to show up frequently in headlines when editors needed a shorter synonym for “legislator.”) It’s a solid, classical name with plenty of gravitas—nicely offset by the yeah-I’m-talking-to-you directness of the tagline.

I'm not so sure that using controversial ideology as a marketing slogan is such a good idea. I think you're thinking of this as a bold move, but to appreciate the downside, you'd have to fabricate a similar slogan for a company that you'd never think of doing business with. Suppose your local church (one that you're not attending, I mean) adopted a slogan that said "Why be a moral failure? Join us!" or if a local ChemLawn-type company used the slogan "The only thing that's important is a beautiful lawn!" Would people be incented (ha) to do business with these folks unless they were already ideologically in line with these beliefs?

@Mike: But don't (some) churches take that approach already? I'm thinking of the doom-and-brimstone slogans that warn about the Rapture and such. And fertilizer ads DO suggest that the end justifies the means.

I agree that going negative, as Solon does, is a tricky choice. But even if I weren't in the choir being preached to, I'd admire the slogan's gutsiness and plain-talking style.

It's an awesome slogan, both for its chutzpah, its distinctiveness, and for its relevance to the services Solon is offering. When you compare it with such banal slogans as "Let's Watch TV" for Dish Network, or "Challenge What's Possible" for Olay - well, there's no comparison.